Microsoft Photo Story 3

Geoff Taylor, last updated 5 January 2008

SUMMARY

This is an exploration of what can be done using Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Windows. In short, we can use Photo Story to make a slideshow of photos or other images to be shown in sequence with an accompanying musical and/or spoken soundtrack. Here's a short example of what can be done:

FACILITIES FOR MAKING VIDEO SLIDESHOWS IN PHOTO STORY 3

There are a number of facilities for making video slideshows in Photo Story 3, and the application takes you, the slideshow maker, through them in a linear fashion. You can move forward and back along the process timeline as much as you want, altering and improving previous decisions.

The key steps are:

• import and arrange your pictures
• edit your pictures if necessary (including colour and contrast adjustments, red-eye adjustment and framing)
• add titles to your pictures
• narrate your pictures (i.e. record audio comments to accompany your pictures)
• customize the motion of your pictures (including Ken Burns' style pan and zoom)
• add background music
• export your video in a suitable format

Let's look at these steps in more detail below.

IMPORT AND ARRANGE YOUR PICTURES

Image sequencing

We start by importing the images we want to sequence, and can then easily drag them left or right into the desired sequence.

Image editing

We can easily alter each image:

• There is a handy auto fix utility for quickly fixing the degree of contrast between light or dark, color levels, and red eye of images, and removing unwanted black borders
• We can rotate images
• We can crop images (delete unwanted portions)

Special effects

• We can add special effects such as rendering the images in black and white or sepia, and even more artistic effects, including making the images appear to have been drawn in charcoal or colored pencil. But these effects are probably best used sparingly.

ADD A TITLE TO YOUR PICTURES

Titles

• We can put titles on one or more of the images, and style the text in various ways.
• BUT: it does not seem to be possible to add titles to blank screens, so it may be better to add opening and closing credits in Windows Movie Maker.

NARRATE YOUR PICTURES AND CUSTOMIZE MOTION

Audio

• We can record a spoken comment to accompany each image, very handy for descriptions. There is even a little text field where we can prepare written comments before recording, as a memory aid.
• BUT: The recordings seem to be tied to individual images, less useful if a long unbroken narrative is needed. It may be better to import the Photo Story file into Windows MovieMaker and add longer narratives there.

Customizing motion

• This is where the key "pan and zoom" controls are, that allow us to create "Ken Burns" style dynamic movements, to enliven and bring greater meaning to our still images
• We can simply use the default motion and duration settings for our images, or we can choose to edit them on a picture-by-picture basis, choosing the the exact framing for the start and finish of the motion of each image, e.g. "zooming" in on a detail, or "panning" across a picture, and the duration of the motion, e.g. 5 seconds
• There are also a great number of transition effects for switching between images, including different types of dissolves and wipes. But these transition effects are probably best used sparingly.

ADD BACKGROUND MUSIC

We can import or create music.

Import

• We can import music, e.g. an MP3 file, if we have one that we can use. The advantage is that we can use whatever brilliant music tracks we may have to hand.
• But remember that digitally-locked songs may not allow themselves to be imported, and even if we can import our favourite pop tunes, commercial copyright restrictions will still apply.

Create

Photo Story has a built-in music creating facility. You choose:

• the GENRE, e.g. classical, jazz, pop, rock or world
• the STYLE, e.g. (for World) Chinese, German or Reggae Swing
• the BAND, e.g. Guitars, Junkyard or Orchestra
• the MOOD, e.g. Adventurous, Bittersweet, Brooding, Legendary or Noble

It's a lot of fun, and quick and easy to do. I like the music I was able to create for my slideshow.
But, the resulting music may not be quite what we want, and in any case will not be original or unique. At worst, it will sound like muzak rather than music.

Saving your slideshow in a suitable format

You may want to save your slideshow, and then import it into Windows Movie Maker, and continue working on it, especially, I would suggest, to add spoken narrative and/or titles. Alternatively, you may have finished the slideshow, and just want to upload it to an online video service like YouTube.

In both cases, you should choose the option to "Save your story for playback on your computer".

In "Settings..." you can select from 4 profiles of differing quality and resolution:
Profile for computers 1 - 320x240
Profile for computers 2 - 640x480
Profile for computers 3 - 800x600
Profile for computers 4 - 1024x768

YouTube recommend 640x480 for videos to upload to their service, so that would probably be the best choice.

Then you are ready to upload to YouTube or edit further in Windows Movie Maker.